Hebrew as Church Language

What would happen if, doing very early Christianity (before say 50 CE), the theological opinion that Hebrew was a unique religous language, and as since God had always spoken in Hebrew, it would be false words (heresy) to translate the texts to any other language (not unalike Arabic in Islam)?
 
What would happen if, doing very early Christianity (before say 50 CE), the theological opinion that Hebrew was a unique religous language, and as since God had always spoken in Hebrew, it would be false words (heresy) to translate the texts to any other language (not unalike Arabic in Islam)?

???
Since Jesus wasn't speaking Hebrew, this would be ... strange.

Most of what Jesus said was probably in Aramaic. His interview with Pilate was probably in Greek. I don't know of any instance where he was specifically speaking Hebrew. (Well, except when he was reading the Torah in the synagogue.)

For GOD (the son) to have spoken only in Hebrew might well have required him to invent Modern Hebrew some 1900 years early.

Besides. If Christianity never got into Greek it would never have spread the way it did.

In fact, you can tell, multiple places in the the New Testament, when someone says "Scripture says...." that they are quoting from the GREEK version of the Old Testament, NOT the Hebrew version.

Even Mark, whose gospel is written in street Greek, loaded with army slang, wrote in Greek.

Even Matthew who wrote his Gospel for Jews, wrote in Greek.

So.

ASB.
 
You can tell how little I know about theology from this question, but why did Jesus speak Aramaic rather than Hebrew?
 

Deimos

Banned
The God of the Old Testament always spoke in Hebrew and with the Babylonian exile of the Jewish elites it became a language exclusively for scholars and religious practices.
For the people to understand him Jesus must have surely preached in Aramaic and perhaps Greek and by 50 AD there would still be witnesses to confirm that - unless you want a Christianity that does not deify Jesus.


Also, I would like to say to Dathi THorfinnsson: Great post! I could definitely not have expressed my mediocre historical/theological knowledge more succinctly. :)
 
You can tell how little I know about theology from this question, but why did Jesus speak Aramaic rather than Hebrew?

Hebrew died as a day-to-day language among Jews at the latest during the Babylonian Exile, where it was replaced with Judeo-Aramaic, a Hebraized version (think Yiddish, but with a language that is much more similar to Hebrew at the base) of the wider trade language tacitly endorsed by the Babylonian Empire, and then continued by the Persian Empire in the Beyond-the-River Satrapy (which included Judea and most of the Jewish people outside of Persia proper and Mesopotamia).

Hebrew continued to be an academic and religious language among Jews, but even that wasn't an absolute rule: Torah scrolls and other religious scripture were converted into Aramaic script (which is what Hebrew is still written in today) and other vernacular scripts - including Greek and Latin - and prayer in the vernacular (which was often Greek, in some communities) was fairly common.

Overall, the chances of proto-Christians assigning of special significance to Hebrew are fairly low. Even by the time of the hard break between post-Nicene Christianity and post-Diaspora Judaism in Constantine's time, Hebrew still had not quite achieved the status that it has in modern Jewish practice (at least, among movements and congregations that engage in non-vernacular liturgy and prayer). Aramaic and Greek language and culture both had their place Jewish worship (certain aspects of which survive today), alongside Hebrew.

It's not impossible, but it would require proto-Christianity to not solidify nearly so early, and for Christianity as we now know it to only emerge as a separate religious tradition after Hebrew primacy was restored in Judaism in the 5th or 6th century. Of course, the Council of Nicaea forcing Jewish bishops to "pick a side" and the subsequent suppression of those who refused to either give up Judaism or Christ probably affected the same arguments, because the Jewish bishops were probably some of the leading voices in the Jewish community against the primacy or exclusivity of Hebrew due to the emphasis on an Aramaic-speaking Messiah in a Greek intellectual tradition who came to save both Jew and Greek, meaning no Nicene Council meaning the butterflies might prevent Hebrew primacy even being fully restored in Hebrew, and...

Well, it's just very, very unlikely.
 
What would happen if, doing very early Christianity (before say 50 CE), the theological opinion that Hebrew was a unique religous language, and as since God had always spoken in Hebrew, it would be false words (heresy) to translate the texts to any other language (not unalike Arabic in Islam)?

So, first I want to point that - yes - Jesus spoke Aramaic (and probably Greek, and maybe a little Latin besides), but that doesn't necessarily mean that a religion following his teachings couldn't use Hebrew as the holy language. After all, Jesus was Jewish, Christianity was originally based on Judaism, Judaism uses Hebrew as its liturgical language...

That said, the possibility of the early Church sticking with Hebrew specifically because it shouldn't be translated is somewhat difficult. By Jesus' time, the Jewish bible had already been translated into Greek, probably around the 3rd century BE, and is generally accepted by Jewish tradition to be an infallible translating (the story being that 70 different scribes all translated it precisely the same, because God was moving through them as they translated). While Jews started rejecting the Septuagint in the first couple of centuries AD, it seems to be mostly because it was "tainted" by association with Christianity (which was mostly Greek speaking in the beginning).

There's also the tradition of targum, or elaborate annotations of the bible, often presented in Aramaic, and rather ubiquitous in most presentations of the Jewish bible. So there'll be some uphill work on avoiding translation.

On the other hand, maybe the tradition of targum can be taken up by the early Christians, preserving the bible in Hebrew (even though it seems likely that most of the New Testament was written in Greek originally), with commentary in Latin/Greek/whatever
 
Note, too, that even chunks of the Old Testament are written in Aramaic, for instance, a significant portion of the Book of Daniel is. There's a line where it says "and he said in Aramaic"... and the author forgot to go back to Hebrew at the end of the quote. (Also parts of Ezra, and few other places.)

Obviously, these are all in the later portions, while the earlier bits like the Torah itself, i.e. the 5 books of Moses, i.e. Pentateuch, are all in Hebrew.

Note, too, that the "Bible" at the time of Jesus was not formally established at all. Several books were widely considered canon that never (probably) existed in Hebrew in the first place. Maccabees, Tobit, etc (basically the Deuterocanonical books that were written in Greek, and accepted by the Roman Church, but not by the Jews when they finally got around to making a firm canon.) It's even more fun, because the Orthodox church has a slightly different set of these from the Roman church, and the Copts have yet a third set. Minor differences, but still.
 
shows how much i actually know about Middle east in roman times ...

Search&replace Hebrew to Aramiac as a church language
 

jahenders

Banned
Whether Hebrew or Aramaic, the effect might be akin to Latin in Catholicism or Arabic in Islam. Eventually, you'd like have either a break away (like protestants) that decided the people should be able to understand or a reformation (Vatican II?) that changed the rule. However, I guess it could go like Islam where lots of people know just enough for religious discourse.

The big effect would probably be a slower spread of Christianity since it would use this relatively obscure language instead of the language of empire and learning.
 
Hebrew died as a day-to-day language among Jews at the latest during the Babylonian Exile, where it was replaced with Judeo-Aramaic, a Hebraized version (think Yiddish, but with a language that is much more similar to Hebrew at the base) of the wider trade language tacitly endorsed by the Babylonian Empire, and then continued by the Persian Empire in the Beyond-the-River Satrapy (which included Judea and most of the Jewish people outside of Persia proper and Mesopotamia).

Hebrew continued to be an academic and religious language among Jews, but even that wasn't an absolute rule: Torah scrolls and other religious scripture were converted into Aramaic script (which is what Hebrew is still written in today) and other vernacular scripts - including Greek and Latin - and prayer in the vernacular (which was often Greek, in some communities) was fairly common.

Overall, the chances of proto-Christians assigning of special significance to Hebrew are fairly low. Even by the time of the hard break between post-Nicene Christianity and post-Diaspora Judaism in Constantine's time, Hebrew still had not quite achieved the status that it has in modern Jewish practice (at least, among movements and congregations that engage in non-vernacular liturgy and prayer). Aramaic and Greek language and culture both had their place Jewish worship (certain aspects of which survive today), alongside Hebrew.

It's not impossible, but it would require proto-Christianity to not solidify nearly so early, and for Christianity as we now know it to only emerge as a separate religious tradition after Hebrew primacy was restored in Judaism in the 5th or 6th century. Of course, the Council of Nicaea forcing Jewish bishops to "pick a side" and the subsequent suppression of those who refused to either give up Judaism or Christ probably affected the same arguments, because the Jewish bishops were probably some of the leading voices in the Jewish community against the primacy or exclusivity of Hebrew due to the emphasis on an Aramaic-speaking Messiah in a Greek intellectual tradition who came to save both Jew and Greek, meaning no Nicene Council meaning the butterflies might prevent Hebrew primacy even being fully restored in Hebrew, and...

Well, it's just very, very unlikely.

Interesting, thanks. I knew Aramaic had eventually overtaken Hebrew in the area, but didn't know that Hebrew had already fallen into disuse long before the last revolt against the Romans.
 
shows how much i actually know about Middle east in roman times ...

Search&replace Hebrew to Aramiac as a church language

Except that a great deal of the Bible was written originally in Hebrew. And while Jesus probably spoke Aramaic as a first language, most people in the region would probably also have spoken Koine Greek, which would probably travel better...

In fact, I think that keeping Greek the language of Christianity would be quite easy indeed.

EDIT: to be clear, I mean also of the Catholic Church.

By the way, does anyone know if the Greek Orthodox Church was always in Greek, or was first in Latin during the unified Church and then became Greek later?
 
In addition to what others have said, the New Testament was composed in Greek, and I doubt it would have seemed plausible to argue both that God always spoke in Hebrew and that these Greek writings were inspired.

Also there's the fact that Christians were supposed to go out and "make disciples of all nations". Given that this would seem to be harder to do if you insist in keeping all your Scriptures in some obscure language that nobody understands anymore, it would probably be quite difficult to stop people translating. Even the Koran, which is supposedly the actual words dictated by God, has been translated a fair few times.

That said, with a POD that keeps Hebrew in more widespread use among the Jews, you might see the early Church adopting Hebrew as a liturgical language, much like Latin was pre-Vatican II. Even then, though, I'd expect there to be at least a few translations for non-liturgical (i.e., proselytising/didactic) purposes.
 
By the way, does anyone know if the Greek Orthodox Church was always in Greek, or was first in Latin during the unified Church and then became Greek later?

I'm pretty sure it was in Greek. During the Classical period the Greek East produced much more philosophy/great literature than the Latin West (and a lot of the Latin-speakers did write was based on Greek models), so it was more prestigious as a language, and it was much more widely spoken in the Eastern Med than Latin was. Basically if you were an Eastern Church trying to pick a language to use, Greek had pretty much everything going for it.
 
Originally posted by Minchandre
By the way, does anyone know if the Greek Orthodox Church was always in Greek, or was first in Latin during the unified Church and then became Greek later?
I'm not sure if initially it was even decided that Latin or Greek would be the official langauge of the Church. I think that using of Latin or Greek by the Church depended of the popularity of a language in local community. In Western Roman Empire Latin was much more popular and acted as a common language for all people - Celts, Germans, Iberians etc. It was because when Romans conquered generally barbaric lands of what later became WRE, they generally had to create their own administration on almost every level, so naturally they used Latin as an official language. Also, they spread their own culture, to replace barbaric ones, so Latin was also a language of civilization and commerce.
OTOH, the territories which later would form the Eastern Roman Empire were generally already civilized enough (by Roman standards), with more or less functional administration and well developed culture. And the language of that culture was Greek. It happened long before Roman conquest, when Alexander the Great's generals divided his empire between themselves and created their own kingdoms, spreading Greek civilization and language. When Romans conquered those kingdoms, they imposed their own governors, but on the medium and low level they generally left local administration alone. They didn't mind local aristocracy, philosophers, artists and merchants speaking Greek, because pretty much every educated Roman spoke Greek. Therefore Greek remained as a common language of most of the local population of ERE.
After the fall of the WRE Latin still remained there as a language of civilization and the Church was the main custodian of that heirloom. Which was why Latin became official language of the Catholic Church, since the Church had to work in many countries and needed a common language. Latin was an obvious choice. And while the ERE survived much longer, the Church there also needed a common lanuage, only there a natural choice was Greek.
It is also good to rememeber, that the Greek is not an official langauge of the Orthodox Church, although AFAIK Orthodox priests are still taught Greek. However, the Orthodox Churches in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine used (and still uses) the Church Slavonic as a liturgical language; the same goes for Armenian, Georgian and other Orthodox churches, which use ancient forms of their own languages. Greek may still serve as a common language (after all the New Testament was originally written in Greek) but it is not the official language of the Orthodox Church, because there is no single Orthodox Church - more like a federation of Orthodox Churches with patriarch of Constantinople as its spiritual leader, but in no way as powerful as the Pope is in the Catholic Church.
I do not know when it was decided that the Latin would be the only official and liturgical language of the Catholic Church. AFAIK the last time the Catholic Church seriously considered allowing some other language as a liturgical one (before the 2nd Vatican Council, of course) was the case of the Slavic rite prepared by Saints Cyril and Methodius in IXth century. Mostly it was abandoned, with Slavic language forbidden as a liturgical langauge, with some exceptions in Croatia and Poland, I think; and there are also Greek Catholic Churches.
 
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